


Summertime Sadness

by Cerulea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotionally mature Derek Hale, Ficlet, M/M, Post Season Four, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerulea/pseuds/Cerulea
Summary: An imagining of how the summer after Season four might have gone if Derek had come home.





	Summertime Sadness

**Author's Note:**

> I’m working on another fic that’s KILLING ME right now, so here’s a short little Sterek Drabble detour. Set between seasons four and five, Derek comes home briefly from his Kate-hunt in Mexico.

 

It’s a bittersweet thing, to know at the start that something will be short-lived, that a good thing, a special moment, is temporary.

When Derek returns from Mexico during June of their summer break, whole and healthy, and slides into Stiles’ bedroom window it’s with an easy countenance and a smirk. Stiles’ relief, his utter joy, must be sharp in Derek’s nose because it crinkles as he smiles shyly and his cheeks pink.

They spend every day together for a month. It’s easy to be in each other’s space, in the Sheriff’s dining room, or Stiles’ bedroom, or Derek’s loft. Whenever they part, Stiles feels incomplete. He is plagued by anxiety fueled by the knowledge that this peaceful reprieve of nothing days and contemplative nights cannot last, and tortured at odd moments with the ghost of profound loss. He can’t forget that this almost wasn’t possible, that only a little while ago a berserker almost ended this story.

That ghost is only vanquished by the proximity of the man himself.

Sometimes they walk for hours, ending up deep in the preserve. For all Stiles jokes about snakes and hoodlums and getting lost, even in the dead of night in the deep of the forest, with Derek by his side he’s never felt safer.

Lying in warm grass under the moon, Derek at his elbow, Stiles feels calm. It’s rare, he soaks it it. Derek’s skin glows under the moon, black eyelashes flutter low over sleepy eyes. He’s heavy and warm and real and sometimes Stiles can’t handle it. All of the affection and relief and desperation surge up in him and he doesn’t know how to let it out. He tries to breathe against the tightening of his chest at the memory of Derek - un-killable, unquestionably permanent Derek - limp against desert rock, dark blood at his mouth, his chest, his stomach; he tries to calm, despite the clawing memory of the feeling of knowing they’d never be more, that he’d left things unsaid, that he’d never really know him the way he longed to.

When Derek’s hand touches his own, it’s warm and careful against Stiles’ tightly closed fist, and it ekes the tension out of him. He breathes out slowly and when he looks at Derek his eyes are pale and pretty, eyebrows drawn up in worry, mouth slightly open.

He doesn’t look real,

But he is.

His eyebrows twitch to ask what it is that caused the undoubtedly noisy change in Stiles’ heartbeat.

Stiles stretches out his hand, laces their fingers. “I’m just... glad you’re here. With me. ... _Not_ dead,” he tacks on drily.

Derek snorts a laugh and it’s so goddamned human, Stiles is enraptured by the sight of his smile as he gazes back up to the stars.

“Me too.”

Stiles isn’t shy about watching him, he doesn’t try to hide it. “When do they expect you back?”

Derek sighs heavily, the merest hint of an eye roll as with every time the Calaveras are mentioned. He shrugs. “I should probably get back before next week.”

Stiles sighs too.

“Just... be careful, alright? I know you have lives like a cat, but you’ve gotta be on like, life eight by now. Eight and a half.”

“I can handle myself.”

Stiles sorts, “Says the guy who I’ve seen stabbed and gutted and poisoned numerous times.”

“I’ve _evolved_ , you haven’t heard?” Derek jokes. But it doesn’t sit right with Stiles, who shudders to think what an overly-cocky Derek Hale could bring upon himself not only potentially facing Kate, but constantly surrounded by the Calaveras. A cold dread grips his stomach, a flash of green eyes looking at him through heavy lids across an insurmountable few feet of desert sand as Derek holds his guts in, blood dripping slow and sticky over the back of his hand. As he tells Stiles to go, and they both know _this_ _is_ _it_.

Derek squeezes his hand, Stiles only realizing then that he’s gripping Derek too tightly, too desperate.

“I’ll be careful,” he promises quietly.

Stiles nods.

They lay there, looking up to the night sky for a long time before Stiles says, voice quiet and brittle, “I didn’t want to leave you.” He hears, feels, when Derek turns to look at him.“I didn’t want to choose. You were... and Scott-”

“Stiles, you didn’t abandon me. I wanted you to save Scott. It’s what we were there for.”

“I know, I know, I just - it was the hardest thing. Walking away from you. For some reason I just... I need you to know that.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. He pulls their intertwined hands up to his chest, holds it over his heart. Even though he’s silent, Stiles thinks maybe this is the most important thing Derek’s ever said to him.

“I wanna do this every night. I want to be with you every day until you leave again,” Stiles decrees, voice strong.

“Good,” Derek answers, but his voice is soft and calm. Another time, earlier in their friendship, that might have come out biting and forceful.

Stiles likes Derek’s bite, his sharp edges and empty threats, he always has. But he likes this too, the way he’s grown, changed. Evolved. He was _attracted_ to the Derek Hale of leather jackets and heartless facade, he _liked_ the Derek Hale of tentative friendship and eye rolling exasperation. But he _loves_ the Derek Hale who is lying beside him now. Stiles is in love with who Derek Hale is becoming, the man he’s on the cusp of growing into, the person he will be.

There’s distance and danger and age between them, but Stiles is stubborn as hell in love. He’s had a ten year plan before, he can wait and vigilantly foster this thing growing between them for as long as it takes. And he will.

He turns, looks at Derek laying soft and relaxed in the grass under the light of the moon, and Stiles smiles when their eyes meet.

“Good.”


End file.
